


flames that burn cold

by shamewithtwolegs



Series: learning to heal here in our war-torn motherland [3]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Asexual Azula, Can be read as a stand alone, Child Abuse, Gen, Hallucinations, Implied/Referenced Sex, Internalized Acephobia, Mental Instability, Non-Linear Narrative, Ozai (Avatar) Being a Terrible Parent, Stand Alone, Unintentional acephobia, not involving Azula
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-22
Updated: 2020-09-22
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:27:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26372689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shamewithtwolegs/pseuds/shamewithtwolegs
Summary: There are many things wrong with Azula
Relationships: Azula & Mai (Avatar), Azula & Ty Lee (Avatar), Azula & Ursa (Avatar), Azula & Zuko (Avatar)
Series: learning to heal here in our war-torn motherland [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1772065
Comments: 8
Kudos: 117





	flames that burn cold

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Choose Your Own Adventure](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23811862) by [verboseDescription](https://archiveofourown.org/users/verboseDescription/pseuds/verboseDescription). 



> God bless [Sadsnail](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sadsnail) for being an amazing beta. Someday I'd get those pesky English tenses down.
> 
> I read Choose Your Own Adventure and thought it'd be cool to try my hand at Non-Linear Narrative. No plagiarism is intended.

“Is it our fault too?” Ty Lee asks, softly. Between them are metal bars and more.

* * *

“Coconut oil helps with the itchy scalp, Azula. Don't neglect your hair,” her mother chastises. She combs her daughter’s hair in the palace’s bath, pressing the comb a little firmer to the scalp to try to ease the itchiness. “You are a princess. You must know how to take care of yourself. Your hair’s so pretty,”

Azula _eeps_ when the comb catches at a stubborn clump of hair. Mother pats her head fondly.

* * *

“Azula.” Zuko reaches out to make the barest of contact with the strands in her face. 

A beat. 

Zuko tucks the strand behind her ears. “Would you like hairpins?”

“You could bring me Master Sozai’s new invention. A gun he calls it. I’m sure the Fire Lord has enough money to spare,” Azula says.

Zuko laughs because he’s learning to notice when Azula is joking.

“I’ll get you one of those hairpins that can store poisons and gut a man,” he promises.

“Father and Mother are fighting again. “ Azula scowls. “I’m getting sick of them.”

Zuko quiets. There’s no one else in the room but them, a guard, and a doctor.

* * *

“ _Don’t look!”_ Mai screeches. Too late. Azula already has the scrolls open on Mai’s bed. They are pictures of tentacled creatures and women artistically rendered in charcoal.

“Mai!” Ty Lee exclaims, scandalously delighted.

Mai snatches the scrolls and shoves it back under her bed, her face bright cherry red.

“You saw nothing,” Mai tells them both, her voice uncharacteristically high with emotions. “ _Nothing.”_

Azula’s eyebrows furrows. “Why are you looking at illustrations of women getting attacked by krakens. And why are they naked?”

“We will not talk about this,” Mai says, firmly.

“Yeah, Mai why? I did not know you have such _deviant_ tastes.” Ty Lee wiggles her eyebrows. Mai throws a pillow at her face.

* * *

It takes half an hour for Azula to learn how to make a paper boat. It takes one to learn how to make a turtleduck. Few things that Azula knows how to make with her hands that do not involve burning. It takes less than a minute for her Father to reduce it all to ashes.

“Azula, you are the crown princess. Do not waste your time on useless endeavors again,” her father warns.

Azula aquises but does not forget.

* * *

“What is _wrong_ with that child?“ Lady Ursa says quietly to herself.

* * *

“Would you like to try braids?” Mai asks Azula.

Azula shrugs. Mai tucks the hairpin Zuko gave her to the side, inlaid with dragon motifs. 

Azula’s hands are bandaged, all ten fingers, and down the wrist. She stares at the air, not quite all there.

* * *

Azula doesn’t not get things. It is just the way things are. Fire is hot and there is nothing Azula can’t understand or excel at. But still—

“That doesn’t make any sense,“ she says slowly, careful not to let a hint of frustration in it. “Tentacles evolved for mobility, prey entrapment, and they grow back. It’s not a sexual organ. Oh. Wait, I misremembered, it actually is. Tentacles can be modified to be used as a sperm depository. Though why anyone would find interspecies mating appealing is a mystery."

Mai and Ty Lee stare at her, bewildered. Then Ty Lee laughs long and full. 

“ _We will not discuss this,”_ Mai hisses, ears red.

“Well, you know, Azula, it’s—it’s hot.” Ty Lee manages in between giggles.

Azula does not, in fact, know that and what hot is, other than in reference to flames. Rather than admit it, she lets it go.

* * *

Fear is no way to make friends and yet it was how she was taught and so it was. Ty Lee’s laughs, rambunctious as ever, takes on a tinge of acting. Mai is quieter than ever and when she speaks there’s poison in it.

Ty Lee tries her best to pretend they’re all real friends. She whispers about a boy in her circus who did things with his tongue, a girl whose fingers were more magical than her magic tricks. Azula is uninterested.

“What about you Azula?” Ty Lee asks like they’re teenagers in a sleepover and not conquerors consolidating their power in a foreign place. Like there is nothing between them. “What’s your sexual fantasy?”

“Tentacles,” Azula lies through her teeth. Mai glares at her.

“Azula isn’t a person,” she snipes, and it hits true like one of her knives.

* * *

It takes twelve years for Azula to suspect something is wrong with her peers. Thirteen to assume she’s a late bloomer. Fourteen to know that something is wrong with her. More than what already is wrong with her, that is. 

_Figures_ , Azula thinks, _one more thing that makes me a monster._

* * *

“Don’t be mean, Mai,” Ty Lee chastises. She’s fixing Azula’s hair. To her, she says, “It’s normal for people to be private about stuff like this. But you know it's fine, Azula, right? Sex, lust, everybody wants that. That’s normal.”

* * *

She knows about the valley and the mountain folds. The creases and pleats, the steps it takes to make turtleducks and fire lilies out of a square sheet of paper. She knows but she cannot do it anymore because her hands are no more functional than paws at this point.

“You’re my sister,” Zuko says, apropos of nothing as if he’s trying to convince himself.

“You’re a monster,” her mother whispers, fearful.

“The rightful heir,” her father states, sure.

“I am,” Azula agrees.

* * *

Citizens of Earth Kingdom are not happy that the Fire Princess suffered no consequences besides treatment. Zuko does not indulge in their cries for blood but should have paid it more attention, as a group takes it upon themselves to seek retribution. Azula is attacked at the healing facility she’s been in for two years now. She is hurt, badly.

She’s sixteen. Fire Lord Zuko, eighteen, wants to scream at them.

* * *

“The doctors say that you’re getting better,” Zuko says.

“I’m insane, aren’t I?” Azula realizes. Mother and Father are still there, Azula just learns not to show that she knows, no, _thinks_ they’re there. “Now. Tell me. What are you gonna do to me?”

“Nothing,” Zuko insists, “Just— Please— Try to get better.”

* * *

“The doctors say it’ll get better,” Zuko says, voice unsure as a child looking for their mother’s approval.

It hurts Azula to curl her fingers but she pretends not to feel the pain.

* * *

It takes five earthbenders to hold her down. It takes one to crush all her fingers. She weeps while it happens. She screams, and she was in pain and human down to her rotten core. After, she laughs about it. And that’s— that’s human too.

She’s just grateful that she got to try her hand at origami.

**Author's Note:**

> Pls send me cat pics. Its one of the few things this world can't take away from me 
> 
> https://www.tumblr.com/blog/averageace
> 
> Criticism welcome.
> 
> EDIT 9/22/2020: Added linebreaks and this explanation - non-linear narratives can be confusing so this is the summary of what happened chronologically: The scene with Lady Ursa and Fire Lord Ozai happens roughly at the same timeframe of Azula's early childhood, the bit in Mai's bedroom happens after Lady Ursa's disappearance, Ty Lee's unintentional acephobic remarks happened during their occupation of Ba Sing Se. Fast forward, during Zuko's reign Azula was confined in a sort of mental health facility wherein she was ambushed by earthbenders, resulting in her crush hands, the bit about Mai doing Azula's hair, and Zuko asking Azula if she'd like a hairpin happens after that attack.


End file.
